Invigilator: Malvern

6th in the Invigilator series with Paul Conneally.

Paul Conneally and I were commissioned by Nathaniel Pitt and MECA to conduct one of our Invigilator pieces in Great Malvern yesterday.

Two pairs of invigilators started from Great Malvern railway station and followed the directions that used to take me from Birmingham’s New Street station to my job at a gallery in Digbeth:

Right, Left, Left, Right, Left, Right, Straight over, Straight over, Straight over, Straight over, Left, Left.

After arriving at our different destinations we commenced watching over our respective spaces. Mine and Jean Baynham‘s journey took us to the entrance to the carpark of Malvern Library. As we were filling in emotion grids for Paul’s research, a man who had approached from behind us and obviously read “invigilator” on the back of our t-shirts asked us what we were going to invigilate. We told him we weren’t sure yet and asked him what he thought we should invigilate and he responded by saying “the car park”. So that’s what we did.

I took my lead from past employment in libraries and started recording visitor statistics: number of people entering and exiting the library; number of people who only walked through the grounds in front of the library; and number of people who walked past us on the pavement without entering into the library grounds at all.

Jean found herself repeatedly approached by passers-by enquiring what it was we were doing and what it was that we were watching over. Magic vests – you gotta love ’em.

Paul and I are now processing various artefacts from the journey and from the invigilation. The results will be displayed in one of the MECA shop window spaces in Great Malvern town centre until the end of the month.